Vietnam

The US is set to roll out a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War... The United States Vietnam War Commemoration website omits something important – the history of post-war protest movement that hit the streets of US cities in the 1960-1970s. Nothing is said about the persecution of anti-war activists many of whom were war vets... According to Marjorie Cohn, a professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California, and a former President of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the most shameful legacies of the Vietnam War is the US military's use of the deadly defoliant Agent Orange, dioxin... War crimes - such as the My Lai (part of Song My village located in South Vietnam's Quang Ngai Province) massacre - were common. In 1968, US soldiers slaughtered 500 unarmed old men, women and children aged from 1 to 82 years old in the Vietnamese village of My Lai...

...The new nationalist right-of-center Narendra Modi government in India has threatened China with force over disputed border territories. With such policies, Modi will find a willing partnership in Washington when it comes to tightening the noose on China. The recent unprecedented criminal indictments by the U.S. Justice Department of five Chinese military officers for allegedly hacking into private corporation computer systems in the United States may be the first shot of what may eventually end up as a new Indochina War, one of Mr. Obama’s own making...

In the XXI century the Asia-Pacific will not only be the world’s largest producer of goods and services, but also the world’s largest consumer of them. Obama has called himself «America's first Pacific president»... The US military buildup in the Asia Pacific is clearly emerging along with strengthening alliances and expanding military exercises. The United States has 320,000 troops in the Pacific region and the Department of Defense has promised there will be no reductions as troops are drawn down in Afghanistan and other parts of the world...

As Asia becomes more prosperous it spends proportionally more of its new wealth on defense. All regional actors get increasingly concerned about the ability to protect their economic interests to ensure sustainable growth. The disputed island territories are a lucrative asset to struggle for. With all the turmoil going on in the Middle East the Asia - Pacific is far from being calm seas too. This spring the tensions were high between China and the Philippines over the disputed Scarborough islands...

The conflict between Beijing and Hanoi over the energy reserves in the South China Sea, which had been simmering for a couple of months, entered a new phase when India's ONGC announced going ahead with the exploratory drilling on the Vietnamese shelf regardless of the threats voiced by China. The South China Sea shelf supposedly holds 30 billion tons of crude plus 16 trillion cu m of natural gas... It is clear that, on top of the conflict with Vietnam, China is headed for serious polemics with Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines which similarly can cite convincing foundations for claims to the disputed shelf...

...The disagreements between the Obama Administration and Netanyahu do not signal a divide between Israel and the US. The strategic relationship between Israel and the United States is still intact. Nor does the gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party over Netanyahu’s March 3 speech reflect divisions between Israel and the US as much as it represents divisions among the US political establishment, specifically between the realists and the neo-conservatives...

03.03.2015

Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a social scientist, award-winning writer, columnist, and researcher. His works have been carried internationally in a broad series of publications and have been translated into more than twenty languages including German, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Armenian, Persian, Dutch and Romanian. His work in geopolitical sciences and strategic studies has been used by various academic and defense establishments in their papers and defense colleges for military officers. He is also a frequent guest on international news networks as a geopolitical analyst and expert on the Middle East.